Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Wishlist => Topic started by: the Lazy ace on March 18, 2006, 05:10:28 PM
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wen ever i c a article bout B17s over Europe or watever many get Hit by flak, crash, and burn. although ive only played 4 bout 8 months ive lost only 3 planes. whitch makes me wonder, "is flak in the game as accurate as it should b."
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Interesting question, and honestly I do not know the answer.
However, in the MA you have, what, maybe 6 puffy acks that can fire at your box of 3 bombers. IRL there were at times HUNDREDS of guns firing at HUNDREDS of bombers that were tightly packed.
So, if you miss by an average of 100 yards IRL, you still hit SOMEONE. In AH, it just looks like a bad shot.
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I think E25280 has given the right answer. Single (or few) heavy acks firing at single planes will rarely have success. At one point in 1944, the Luftwaffe estimated that for every heavy bomber shot down by Flak approximately 4000 rounds were fired. You´ll have to fly around a very long time in the MA to give our six acks the opportunity to fire that much at you ;-)
Fly around with hundred buffs over strat targets defended by hundreds of guns, and you may see a bomber falling out of the sky every few minutes...
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On top of that, HTC has to blalance in the fun factor with realism. How fun would it be to climb to 15-20k in bombers only to be blown to peices over and over.
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but still, in the worst american bomber raid, we lost 69 bombers due to flak and interceptores that doenst seem so significant out of like a 1000 bomber formation
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Originally posted by the Lazy ace
but still, in the worst american bomber raid, we lost 69 bombers due to flak and interceptores that doenst seem so significant out of like a 1000 bomber formation
I don't know where you got that number, but it seems incorrect. The numbers I remember say that it wasn't unusual to lose 1/3rd of the bombers or more on those major raids.
And I know with certaintly that more bombers were brought down by Flack than by enemy fighters. by the time we were flying deep into Germany the LW was hard up for gasoline and good pilots. Few were able to get to the bombers when they were up high and the P51 escorts were able to keep them pretty busy. Flak was the main threat to the bombers at that point in the war.
Oh, wait a minute, you're that same guy who was asking about Polesti in the other forum...
Sir, there were only about 136 bombers in the polesti raid... A loss of 69 is about half of the total flight, and that is right in line with the kind of losses that were seen during other flights..
Secondarily that was a low level attack and Flak wasn't as much of a factor as it would have been in the raids over Germany.
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69 bombers was still 690 crew.
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in AH the flak is reversed, i absolutely despise AI auto ack.
i say reversed because it is LETHAL against fighters. you can be doing 400mph and it will hit and kill you. You can be climbing away from your base that an enemy cv is attacking, go above 3k, WHACK... dead. Turnfighting, dead... I lose 2 or 3 planes a month to AI puffy ack it seems.
on the other hand, AI puffy ack seems to never do anything to bombers. i have not been killed, or seen anyone be killed in a bomber formation by AI puffy ack. which is just not historical and downright ridiculous. AI auto ack is supposed to be there to defend a target in absence of human players isnt it? what is going to do more damage to a target, a lone fighter? or a formation of bombers?
this is the one part of AH that i hate, and i wish that it was changed.
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Originally posted by Furball
in AH the flak is reversed, i absolutely despise AI auto ack.
i say reversed because it is LETHAL against fighters. you can be doing 400mph and it will hit and kill you. You can be climbing away from your base that an enemy cv is attacking, go above 3k, WHACK... dead. Turnfighting, dead... I lose 2 or 3 planes a month to AI puffy ack it seems.
on the other hand, AI puffy ack seems to never do anything to bombers. i have not been killed, or seen anyone be killed in a bomber formation by AI puffy ack. which is just not historical and downright ridiculous. AI auto ack is supposed to be there to defend a target in absence of human players isnt it? what is going to do more damage to a target, a lone fighter? or a formation of bombers?
this is the one part of AH that i hate, and i wish that it was changed.
Well as you probably know by now, I fly bombers a lot. I lose bombers to AI puffy ack occasionally and am damaged more often than that. My worst run was over a factory when I lost two of my bombers to the stuff and this was at 21K.
I've noted that puffy ack over cv's is worse for your health than over factories. The player controlled 5" guns make it so. Might be the reason for your experience.
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i did a little experiment on sunday.
i upped a single lanc, with the intention to see how long a bomber would last, set a headwind and hovered over a CV at 9k to see how long it would take puffy ack to kill me.
after 25 - 30 mins i augered out of sheer boredom with no damage.
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Originally posted by Furball
i did a little experiment on sunday.
i upped a single lanc, with the intention to see how long a bomber would last, set a headwind and hovered over a CV at 9k to see how long it would take puffy ack to kill me.
after 25 - 30 mins i augered out of sheer boredom with no damage.
Try attacking enemy buffs over your CV. Your own puffy ack will PWN you before it does enything to them :lol
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i've had that.
attacking b17's who are in bombsight unawares that i am 400 behind in chog, nail one, puffy ack shooting
down i go "you have crashed". FRIENDLY puffy ack took my wing off.
have i told you lately that i hate AI ack?
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Historically, it would take anywhere from 6000-10000 AAA shells to take down a single aircraft flying level - straight - and at the same speed. (references available: pm if you'd like them)
To bomber crews, it was hell. When you had several hundred flak guns putting 10-50 shells in the air every minute, 10000 flak explosions takes just two minutes. Not a nice place to be.
In AH, the AAA is questionable because I don't know of the mechanism of how it works, only Pyro or Hitech can answer that question. The laser AAA turrets however are strong in order to address a gameplay issue of vulching. CV AAA is again very deadly for fighters.
In the AvA arena, we turn down the AAA to .25: it actually feel spooky. The AAA is a nuisance, and can damage your aircraft, but not rip a wing off with just one hit. You have a better chance of being wounded by AAA than it destroying your aircraft - which is historic. Most bombers and fighters were rarely knocked out by AAA - although a lot of crews were wounded. A lucky strike would be required to take an aircraft down - or unlucky for the bombers. Which is why a lot of them were very supersticious during the war. The freaky and random nature of AAA can rattle the best of men.
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It is randomized. Sometimes I'm getting hit so much by puffy act over a factory, it's like somebody was directing the fire. Most times, though, it's just pretty sky decoration.
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Originally posted by Mister Fork
In AH, the AAA is questionable because I don't know of the mechanism of how it works, only Pyro or Hitech can answer that question. The laser AAA turrets however are strong in order to address a gameplay issue of vulching. CV AAA is again very deadly for fighters.
i can answer that.
picture an imaginary box around your aircraft. in this imaginary box the puffy ack will randomly fire into. the faster you go, the bigger this box gets so there is less chance of getting hit.
the slower you go, the smaller this box gets so the more chance you have of getting hit.
you maneuver = bigger box
level = smaller box
So, basically, flying around puffy ack is just a randomly generated time bomb of getting hit.
i have asked HT before and this is how i know, i was curious as to how flak always boxes itself round a turning target, rather than shoot where the target would have been, the box is constant.
I would much prefer if they put in a time variable so that maneuvering targets would be much less affected by puffy ack. (i.e. ack shoots where the target was headed 3 seconds ago etc.) but i dont know how hard this would be to model.
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Originally posted by Furball
have i told you lately that i hate AI ack?
Can't recall, but always wondered what your feellings towards the AI ack were
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Originally posted by dedalos
Can't recall, but always wondered what your feellings towards Hub were
:furious :mad: :mad: :furious
clear enough?
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grrrr, it wont change my quotes after I edit them.
You are free to go Furbie :rofl
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Why can't we have manned ack plus the AI?????
I have been downed in my b-24s several times by ack and other times it just took out my guns to leave me open the ANY attack. I've even lost an engine at 33k this way.
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Furball: Your missing some,
turning = bigger box also. Farthar away from ack = bigger box also.
The problem with what your sugesting is it would be posible just by turning slightly to never have the ack hit you. And then to make if you were flying level it would nail you instantly.
And as was just tested above for "20 mins", It is not very accurate.
HiTEch
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Originally posted by hitech
Furball: Your missing some,
turning = bigger box also. Farthar away from ack = bigger box also.
The problem with what your sugesting is it would be posible just by turning slightly to never have the ack hit you. And then to make if you were flying level it would nail you instantly.
And as was just tested above for "20 mins", It is not very accurate.
HiTEch
I said that turning made a bigger box, i didnt know that distance made a bigger box though.
It would still hit you, you would just no longer be center of the box (depending on how far you turn) so less chance of being hit
I just think it would add a bit of realism to the AI ack system. In RL (bear in mind that i am no AA gun expert) they see the target, calculate trajectory/change in trajectory, load, aim, fire, shell takes time to reach the target.
my proposition means that: -
Distance from target = time variable.
i.e. the further you are away from ack gun, the longer the time between the calculated heading and the actual puffy ack burst.
Fighters hanging above CV picking away fighters trying to fly away from the boats would have almost instantaneous ack bursting around them. The poor guy upping from his own field which is under CV attack 6 miles away, passing 3k would no longer get insta-ack-burst around him.
Therefore AI ack would be more like it was historically, level bombers would suffer far more from ack because they will not be moving to throw off aim, fighters jinking about fighting would be nearly impossible to hit.
My test, i was 9k over CV, flying at 130 mph with a 127mph headwind flying level, the box to shoot at my bomber should have been as small as it would possibly go and i didnt suffer any damage. I am by no means saying my test was the most thought out and accurate test ever performed, but i was intrigued to see how ack would fare against a bomber hovering over CV. Of course i should hover over the CV in a fighter to see how long it takes to take damage to make it a fair test.
I really think that this should play a part in TOD as ack was a serious threat to bomber crews, here it is more a threat to the escorting fighters. I understand completely that a complex puffy ack system is stupid, all it will do is hog system resources, why i think just adding a time delay is a simple yet effective solution.
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A picture to illustrate what i mean...
Red box is ack box, i didnt bother changing the size depending on maneuver etc.
(http://www.furballunderground.com/Guest/Furball/ack.GIF)
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From that, it looks like bombers should get hit regularly. What a neat idea. :rolleyes:
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Originally posted by ChopSaw
What a neat idea. :rolleyes:
actually, it would be the same system but less accurate for maneuvering targets, unless HT modified the way the box works.
read up and you will understand.
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Originally posted by Furball
actually, it would be the same system but less accurate for maneuvering targets, unless HT modified the way the box works.
read up and you will understand.
Soooo.....the same as it is now for bombers, but easier on fighters?
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Point being furball, you end up with the exat same thing, all your realing asking for is a higher gain on the turning part of the equations. I.E. you wish to be hit less by flack than your are now.
HiTech
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wat the hell kinda town is named grapevine
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IMO, I still think all ack should be manable. Have "Flak Batteries" just like they did in WWII.
That way if your shot down by "Flak" then it is at least it's from another player and not a computer?
OR
Have deployable Flak batteries, 88's, 5" Guns, 40mm mounts (twin & quad mounts)
Maybe make it a little more time intensive to setup so you can't just "hop in" a gun and start firing. Just a thought.
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Originally posted by Kurt
I don't know where you got that number, but it seems incorrect. The numbers I remember say that it wasn't unusual to lose 1/3rd of the bombers or more on those major raids.
Only in the Luftwaffe's wet dreams.
That would be a 33% attrition. The highest they obtained on an overall basis was, as I recall, about 15% and that is what caused us to pull back and prioritize the aquisition of an escort fighter that could go all the way to Berlin and back.
The highest I am aware of was a 52% loss of B-17s on one mission, but there were only 100 aircraft in the mission and it got swarmed. Any big mission was simply too large for the Luftwaffe's limited power to blunt that heavily.
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Originally posted by hitech
Point being furball, you end up with the exat same thing, all your realing asking for is a higher gain on the turning part of the equations. I.E. you wish to be hit less by flack than your are now.
HiTech
Basically, i want it so that maneuvering has more of an impact on the accuracy of flak so that it is more true to its historical effectiveness. i.e. more of a threat to bombers than to fighters.
In its current form it is reversed and ack is more of a threat to fighters and virtually no threat to bombers.
Either that or AI ack should prioritise targets, i.e. if they are in the sector, shoot at bombers who are intending to destroy the target that the ack is supposed to be defending as a priority. In RL the gunners wouldnt waste ammo on escort fighters if they are flying near to the bomber stream.
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Originally posted by MOIL
Have deployable Flak batteries, 88's, 5" Guns, 40mm mounts (twin & quad mounts)
Maybe make it a little more time intensive to setup so you can't just "hop in" a gun and start firing. Just a thought.
that is another option. let players control the ack batteries, rather than have the prox fuses they would need to be the German timed fuses - that would mean my timing idea would not be needed as the calculation, adjustment etc would be performed by the human player.
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Exactly:aok
I wouldn't feel so bad getting taken outta the sky by another player instead of some computer generated flak puffs.
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I like both ideas.. All I think Furball is asking for is some more delay on the tracking for the ack so you can actually have some significant value to manuvering in a fighter other than living in a larger box. A minor change but more realistic.
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Originally posted by rabbidrabbit
I like both ideas.. All I think Furball is asking for is some more delay on the tracking for the ack so you can actually have some significant value to manuvering in a fighter other than living in a larger box. A minor change but more realistic.
:aok
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Bomber guy here. The proposal seems fair.
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I stead of 6 computer operated acks there could be one person and all the guns shoot where ever he shoots
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so if he misses, thats 6 flak shots wasted
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Originally posted by 68slayr
I stead of 6 computer operated acks there could be one person and all the guns shoot where ever he shoots
that would not be realistic
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Originally posted by RAIDER14
that would not be realistic
Unlike bomber guns?
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Originally posted by Lye-El
Unlike bomber guns?
Again with the "bomber guns are too good". Okay, how do you think they're unrealistic?
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Originally posted by ChopSaw
Again with the "bomber guns are too good". Okay, how do you think they're unrealistic?
dispersion, auto aimed guns that all fire at one point, unmanned guns firing (both cheek guns and chin gun at same time).
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What I find REALLY unrealistic is 3 bombers flying with only 1 pilot:noid
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Originally posted by SuperDud
What I find REALLY unrealistic is 3 bombers flying with only 1 pilot:noid
Oh puleeze, I bet they did it ALL the time :D
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Come on! If its in AH, it has to be historically correct, eh? :p
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I'm not touching the parts about bombers in anyway! I thought this was about the FLAK anyway. :rolleyes:
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Originally posted by Furball
dispersion, auto aimed guns that all fire at one point, unmanned guns firing (both cheek guns and chin gun at same time).
You know….you're right. That's really unrealistic in the real world sense. Doesn't belong in this "real" video game at all. Lets fix those bombers so they're real.
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ChopSaw, Word of advise. If you stop useing words like "Fix" and instead use words like change you might start getting a better response.
Fix implies they are broken and do not work as intended.
HiTech
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Originally posted by hitech
ChopSaw, Word of advise. If you stop useing words like "Fix" and instead use words like change you might start getting a better response.
Fix implies they are broken and do not work as intended.
HiTech
Thank you for your comment. I'll keep it in mind in future posts. You're right, change or changed back sound much better. However, I was employing sarcasm when I used the term "fix". The sarcasm was directed at Furball's rather glib and simplistic reply.
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Maneuvering shouldn't help out at all, because it didn't in real life. German flak batteries were given boxes in the sky in which to shoot. No one on the heavy flak guns on the deck were "aiming" at individual planes. In the beginning of the war, they tried "aiming" and it didn't work. Traditional AAA defense doctrine revolves around sectors of fire combined with separate altitudes for different batteries. You make a 3-D box for planes to fly through and hopefully hit some of them. The N. Vietnamese even did it with SAM's, volley firing them towards planes. Watch the videos of the Gulf War and see how the Iraqi batteries keep shooting in one direction the whole time--same thing. Flak (puffy ack in AH) was a completely random thing in ETO, it should remain so in AH. I think it works well in the game, serves its purpose, and visually gets you into the period during play.
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Originally posted by ChopSaw
You know….you're right. That's really unrealistic in the real world sense. Doesn't belong in this "real" video game at all. Lets fix those bombers so they're real.
Originally posted by ChopSaw
However, I was employing sarcasm when I used the term "fix". The sarcasm was directed at Furball's rather glib and simplistic reply.
You are quite the touchy one.
I was replying to you saying what i found "unrealistic" with the bomber guns. Sorry i will add more sugar and sprinkles next time to save you getting offended.
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Originally posted by Stoney74
Maneuvering shouldn't help out at all, because it didn't in real life. German flak batteries were given boxes in the sky in which to shoot. No one on the heavy flak guns on the deck were "aiming" at individual planes. In the beginning of the war, they tried "aiming" and it didn't work. Traditional AAA defense doctrine revolves around sectors of fire combined with separate altitudes for different batteries. You make a 3-D box for planes to fly through and hopefully hit some of them. The N. Vietnamese even did it with SAM's, volley firing them towards planes. Watch the videos of the Gulf War and see how the Iraqi batteries keep shooting in one direction the whole time--same thing. Flak (puffy ack in AH) was a completely random thing in ETO, it should remain so in AH. I think it works well in the game, serves its purpose, and visually gets you into the period during play.
That is a good point.
But in Aces High they do track the target because there are fewer guns available. You can sit on CV deck/runway tower and watch the AI guns track the target. Probably just a visual thing i know - as ack does not originate from the ack guns and is actually generated in the box system that we speak of above. (and thats why it can "shoot through hills" etc)
HT, another thing i noticed as quite strange when i was flying the other day in fighter town - I was zooming along the deck close to the water, and because the bases there are at 5k, puffy ack was shooting at me even though i was 2 or 3k below the actual base. Didnt bother me any, but i dont know if you want to look at it as a bug?
Thanks.
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This is the wish forum, so here is my wish:
I wish Furbal woul stop crying about getting killed from the puffy ack :cry
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i wish your wife would put rat poison in your coffee so you stop tainting the name of our good squad.
:D
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Originally posted by Furball
i wish your wife would put rat poison in your coffee so you stop tainting the name of our good squad.
:D
The BrokebacKnights? The squad sucks. Have you seen our score? And to think some in this squad think they are good. We are not even in the top 100. Pathetic :mad:
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Fight, fight!!! Inner squad fight!!! ………..and don't forget my sprinkles. I like chocolate. (bounces on his seat waiting for next round of verbal blows) Ah the weave and warp of wit as it flies through the air with the greatest of ease.
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Originally posted by ChopSaw
Ah the weave and warp of wit as it flies through the air with the greatest of ease.
you mis-spelled ****.
:D
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Originally posted by ChopSaw
Fight, fight!!! Inner squad fight!!! ………..and don't forget my sprinkles. I like chocolate. (bounces on his seat waiting for next round of verbal blows) Ah the weave and warp of wit as it flies through the air with the greatest of ease.
Too easy. I'll drop you back in
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Originally posted by dedalos
Too easy. I'll drop you back in
(sigh) It was such a beautiful fly.